Why I Quit My Job at Bugcrowd

You can watch the video above, or read the blog. They both say roughly the same thing.

Yep! I did it. I resigned from Bugcrowd.

Something about titling the blog “Why I Quit My Job at Bugcrowd” might have you thinking that I’m about to explode into a dramatic display of anger and resentment towards Bugcrowd, scaaaalding them with mighty words.

I’m not.

In fact, I absolutely loved working there. I’d recommend it to anyone. It’s a great organisation. My pay was great, the people were great and I got to work on a lot of purposeful projects. This isn’t so much a blog about why I left Bugcrowd as it is about leaving a job in general. Many would say I am crazy for leaving. Maybe I am! At this stage, I’m not even sure I have made the right decision myself. In this blog I want to explain why I left, and what I’m doing next.

Reasons for leaving

Wealth 💰

For me, true wealth is the ability to earn enough money to live comfortably without having to work. I don’t want to achieve this when I’m 65, I want to achieve it as soon as possible.

Why do I want wealth?

Sometime around late 2019 my wife and I were looking to buy our first home. It quickly became apparent that we would not be able to afford the house of our dreams. At this point I realised that I needed to start paying more attention to money. I’d been working for a decade, why couldn’t I buy the house that I wanted?

How can one obtain wealth?

I started reading books about how to become wealthy. I devoured all the classics, “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, “Think and Grow Rich”, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”, etc. They all basically say the same thing. Don’t trade time for money.

Robert Kiyosaki puts it well in his books, he segments income types into four different categories that he calls the “cashflow quadrant”. The four main types of income are:

Employee – you are employed by someone else and paid for your time.
Self employed – you are employed by yourself, but still paid for your time.
Business Owner – you own a system that makes you money.
Investor – your money makes you money.

In order to be “wealthy”, Robert Kiyosaki says that you should prioritise earning money from income streams as far down that list as possible. Notice that the further down the list you go the more scalable the income streams become and the more opportunity you have to free up your time.

The plan…

At Bugcrowd, I was 100% employee. My plan is to get further down that list by starting a business. I found it hard to do this when I spent the better part of my time/brainpower working as an employee. Now I’ll be refocusing all of that brainpower and time into generating income as a business owner. Most money that I earn above my living expenses will be invested.

Freedom 🦅

The other reason that I quit my job is for personal freedom.

What is freedom? 🤷‍♀️

Personal freedom comes in many forms.

To name a few:

Freedom of time
Freedom of location
Financial freedom
Freedom of expression
Freedom of choice

The disconnect between freedom and employment 💔

No matter how good the culture at your company is or how much you love your job, you will still be required to forgo some amount of freedom when you are an employee. That’s why you get paid.

For example:

You must work during specific times (sacrifice time freedom).
You can’t say anything on social media that would negatively affect your employer (freedom of expression).
If your boss asks you to do something, you have to do it (freedom of choice).
If an employer decides that they don’t want to pay you money anymore, they can sack you (financial freedom).

This isn’t a dig at any company, it’s just how employment works. Employees get paid to forgo their freedom. This thought has been eating away at me for a long time, and it has contributed greatly to my decision to take this risk.

The alternative

I am trying to reconfigure my life to look more like this:

I decide when I work.
I decide how hard I work.
I decide what I work on.
I decide where I work from.
I decide who I work with.
I express myself freely.

What am I doing next? 🚀

There are a few ways that I’m planning to make money.

Starting My Own Cybersecurity Consultancy 👨‍💼

I’ve started my own cybersecurity consultancy, Haksec. This is my first public mention of it! Haksec provides virtual CISO (vCISO) and penetration testing services. I want to focus more on the vCISO side of things, because my experience as a penetration tester has taught me that a lot of businesses need general guidance more than a pentest.

If you know anyone who may be interested please send them my way, it would mean the world.

Bug Bounties 👾

I cut back on bug bounty hunting a lot since I started at Bugcrowd back in March 2020. I just haven’t felt overly motivated to do it because after a full day working full-time at Bugcrowd I was all bugged out. I am really looking forward to having more time to sink into this again – I can feel my motivation bubbling back already and I’ve landed a few good bugs in the last couple of weeks!

Content Creation 👨‍🎨

I’m going to be creating a lot more content.

Firstly, I’ll be creating content on my personal channels (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and my blog). I will be fully transparent about my bug bounty hunting journey including what bugs I find and how much I’m earning. I also want to make general life videos.

I will also be creating cyber-security related content on behalf of other organisations. I’ve already started doing a bit more of this. If you want any type of cybersecurity-related content created for you, feel free to get in touch.

I am scared 😬

This is one of the biggest decisions I’ve ever made and it’s a huge risk. Even more so with a family to provide for. The truth is, I don’t know if it will work out and if it doesn’t I hope that I will come back to the workforce in 6+ months with a whole new appreciation for the safety and security of employment.

Support 💪

If you’d like to support me on my journey, there are a bunch of things you can do:

Refer people to Haksec if they are looking for cybersecurity services or advice.
Sponsor me on GitHub
Sponsor my upcoming content (get in touch via any of my socials)
Hire me to create content for your organisation
Share my content 🙂